kill

In the Dutch language, kill is used to describe streams and river channels, and is literally translated into English as brook. So it is not surprising to ﬁnd the term commonly applied to the parts of the American East originally settled by the Dutch. On maps of the upper Hudson Valley and the Delaware Valley one can ﬁnd landforms, rivers, and towns containing the word—the Catskill (Cats Creek) Mountains of southeast New York State, and the mighty Schuylkill River (or “Hidden Channel River”) that ﬂows through Philadelphia. Although the Dutch also settled the lower Hudson Valley, kill is not widely used there, perhaps because the Dutch culture was subsumed after 1664 when the English captured the colony of New Netherland and renamed it New York. Elsewhere on